Translation of homonyms, synonyms and antonyms

Lecture-9. Simultaneous translation and its history

The plan of the lecture

1. 
   Whispered interpreting.
   
2. 
   The conference interpreting.
   
3. 
   The early writing period of interpreting.
   

Key words:

Simultaneous, whispered interpreting, the conference interpreting, to reproduce the whole speech, free-lance conference interpreters, decision and execution stage, ear-voice span, noice, pauses in speech delivery, vocalization of meaning, provide training experiences.

In simultaneous interpreting, the interpreter sits in an interpreting booth, listening to the speaker through a headset and interprets into a microphone while listening. Delegates in the conference room listen to the target-language version through a headset.

Simultaneous interpreting is also done by signed language interpreters from a spoken into a signal language and vice versa. Signed language interpreters do not sit in the booth; they stand in the conference room where they can see the speaker and be seen by other participants.

Whispered interpreters is a form of simultaneous interpreting in which the interpreter does not sit in a booth in the conference room, but next to the delegate who needs the interpreting, and whispers the target-language version of the speech in the delegate’s ears.

None of these modes of interpreting is restricted to the conference setting. Simultaneous interpreting has been used in large conferences, forums and whispered interpreting may be used in a business meeting.

The conference interpreters become the delegates they are interpreting. They speak in the first person when the delegate does so, not translating along the lines of “He says that he thinks this is a useful idea…”

The conference interpreting must empathize with the delegate; put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

The interpreter must be able to do this work in two modes: consecutive interpretation, and simultaneous interpretation. In the first of these, the interpreter listens to the totality of speaker’s comments, or at least a significant passage, and then reconstitutes the speech with the help of notes taken while listening; the interpreter is thus speaking consecutively to the original speaker.

Some speakers prefer to talk for just a few sentences and then invite interpreters. The interpreter can perhaps work without notes and rely solely on their memory to reproduce the whole speech.

A conference interpreter should be able to cope with speeches of any length; they should develop the techniques of interpreting.

In practice, if interpreters can do a five-minute speech satisfactorily, they should be able to deal with any length of speech.

It is also clear that conference interpreters work in a real time. In simultaneous, by definition, they can not take longer than the original speaker, except for odd seconds. Even in conecutive they are expected to react immediately after the speaker has finished, and their interpretaion must be fast and efficient. This means that interpreters must have the capicity not only to analyze and resynthesise ideas, but also to do so very quickly. In most cases nowadays simultaneous interpreting is done with the appropriate equipment: delegates speak into microphones, which relay the sound dirictly to interpreters seated in sound-proofed booths listening to the preceeding ear-phones; the interpreters in turn speak into a microphone which relay their interpretation dedicated channel to head-phones worn by delegates who wish to listen to interpreting. In some cases, such equipment is not available, and simultaneous interpreting is whispered. One of the participants speaks and simultaneously an interpreter whispers into the ear of the one or maximum two people who require interpreting services.

Simultaneous interpreting takes up less time than consecutive. Given this advantage and widening is being done in simultaneous.

Confernce interpereting was born during World War I. Until then, important international meetings were held in French, the international language at the time. During World War I, some high-ranking American and British negotiators did not speak French, which made it necessary to resort to interpreters.

The first experiment in simultaneous conference interpreting dates back to 1928, the VIth Comintern Congress. There were no telephones. The speaker’s message reached the interpereters’ ears directly. The first booth and headphones appeared in 1033 at the XIIIth Plenary Meeting of the Comintern Executive. A group of Russian simultaneous interpreters from Moscow formed part of the conserence interpreter’s team servicing the Nuremburg Trials and another one participated in the Tokyo Trials of the Japanese war criminals.

The interptereters who worked at those first conferences came out of the Nuremburg Trials Interpretation Service where they had made their debute as simultaneous interpreters. They had been young graduates of the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, where they were trained as military translators-interpreters, Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, Moscow University, and the Institute of Philosophy and Literature as well as several staff members of the Foreign Ministry and the Society for Cultural Exchanges with Foreign Counters took a part in training interpreters. Some of the most capable among them formed the first post-war group of free-lance conference interpreters in Russia.

An International Economic Conference serviced with simultaneous interpreting was conducted in 1952 in Moscow, employing over fifty simultaneous interpreters with six conference languages: Rissian, English, French, German, Spanish and Chinese. The lead language-changing mode is a purely national system based on one native common to all members of the team of simultaneous interpreters, which in fact serves as a “lead language”.

Since 1962 the United Nations Language Training Course in Moscow, at the Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages, set itself as a school where 5 to 7 simultaneous conference interpreters are trained annually for the Russian Booth of the UN Secretariant in New York, Geneva and Vienna.

Simultaneous translation studies began after the invention of the multichannel tape recorder and were done at roughly the same time by several researchers at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies.

Shiryayev writes that simultaneous interpretation as a specialized activity consists of Steps or Actions, each of which has several stages. The most important stages are: stage of orientation, stage of the search for, the translation decision and execution stage. When the speaking rate in the source language is slow, enough, stage one of step two follows stage three of step one there is no simultaneity of listening and speaking, in fact.

The early writings period covers the 1950s and early 1960s. During the period, some interpreters and interpreting teachers in Geneva and Brussels started thinking and writing about their profession.

The experimental period includes the 1960 and early 1970s. A few psychologists and psycholinuists such as Treisman, Oleron and Nanpon, Goldman-Eisler, Gerver and Barik became interested in interpreting. They undertook a number of experimental studies on specific psychological and psycholinguistic aspects of simultaneous interpreting and studied the effect on performance of variability such as source language, speed of delivery, ear-voice span, noice, pauses in speech delivery, etc.

During the practitioner’s period, which started in late 1960s and continued into the 1970s and 1980s, interpreters, and especially interpreters teachers, began to develop an interesting theory. There was much activity in Paris, West Germany, Switzerland and other European countriies, as well as in Russia, Czechoslovakia and Japan.

Simultaneous interpretation is a complex human information processing activity composed of a series of independent skills. The interpreter receives a meaning unit. He begins translating and conveying meaning unit I.at the same time, meaning unit 2 arrives while the interpreter is still involved with the vocalization of meaning unit.I. thus the interpreter must be able to hold unit 2 in some type of echoic memory or short term memory before interpretation.The interpreter has to learn to monitor, store, retrieve, and translate source language input while simultaneously transforming a message into target language output at the same time.

There are, in fact, so many activities involved during simultaneous interpretation. Pedagogical approach should tease these activities apart, differentiate the component skills, and where possible, provide training experiences in each one.